In manufacturing processes, it is almost always necessary to perform quality control on a part so manufactured. In some cases, this quality control will permit the manufacturer to sell the part for a better price if the part is within tighter tolerances. Additionally, in some industries such as the aerospace industry, or the electronics industry, parts will be rejected if they are not manufactured to strict tolerances.
In the past, a comparison of the part to engineering drawings has been done manually or through vision systems, but using a paper copy of the drawings, with the inherent disadvantages that this may entail.
The Assignee of the present application has filed International Patent Application No. PCT/CA2010/000295 (published as WO 2010/099604 A1 on Sep. 10, 2010), directed to a system and method for overlaying an image of a drawing to an image of the part, on a screen. Two of the many advantages of this system are that scaling of the drawing can be done using conventional image manipulation techniques, and also that the alignment of the drawing and the part can be performed either manually or automatically.